pilgrimage

It has been a few months since this blog has received my attention, a combination of a "tween" home on summer break, working on new projects for my business, and enjoying the summer once it showed up in late July. Gratitude for your patience with my summer slow-down....

For the past few summers, I have longed to make pilgrimage to northern Michigan, more my home while growing up than the many towns and houses we lived in. Both my parents were born and raised in this little town of Cheboygan, land of birch forests and crystal clear lakes. Once our family stopped moving to a new town every year, we rented a cottage for the summer on the large inland lake next to Cheboygan. My teenage summers were spent in imitation of a mermaid's life, my hours spent in the lake offering me retreat and respite from my duties as the oldest of 7 children.

Life lately has taught me the fallacy of putting off through logic what time will bring back as regret. I began to plan for my longed-for road trip to northern Michigan where I could say hello and goodbye to my elderly relatives, make some peace with ghosts of times past, and swim once again in the embrace of my beloved lake. And while my tween dutifully made her objections to being tortured by the hours of being in the car with her mother, I knew the life-wisdom of bringing her to her larger family and history at this teen-age and stage of her life. Grace brought to my computer search a lakeside cottage on my beloved lake, offering my childhood bliss of being in the water for hours and hours at a time. Even the weather, which had been not so summer-like, was turning sunny and hot, the perfect weather in which to swim in water where ice leaves in late May.... grace was greasing the wheels of my pilgrimage.

And yet, I realized I was hedging on fully committing to my pilgrimage "up north". Gently inquiring within, I understood that this road trip was a commitment to re-claiming my trust in my life, trust that had become rather tattered after the betrayal of a husband of many years along with the betrayal by the spiritual community I had loved and and helped grow. ...trust that my car with many miles would not break down, trust that the money I was spending on renting a cottage would be replenished in the fall, and trust that the lake of my childhood would still as magical as it was in my memories. There was realization that my reasons for not embarking on this journey of my soul's longing-dressed up as logical-were simply excuses to live a little less, feel a little less, and reach for a little less. OK as long as I was willing to tell myself the truth of my choice to live a smaller life due to dented trust in life, not the pseudo-reasons of work, finances, and time....often used as excuses for not leaning into life with trust and faith.

And so, not wanting to surrender to living "less than" my glorious precious life, I chose to embrace my life scars not as damage, but rather, as victories in fully engaging with life. The result? One of the best experiences of my life with my tween even offering that she would like to do this trip again next summer! The lake's embrace was as magical and nurturing as I have remembered it, the relatives grateful and generous in their love and sharing of family history, and the break from all things electronic-even my computer, oh my!-simply priceless beyond words. The cottage was perfect in it's cottage-ness of knotty pine walls and birch tree vista of lake and vast sky. My morning meditations and journaling on the deck just 10 feet from the shoreline, were shared by multitudes of hummingbirds and the sparkling of the rising sun upon the water. My daughter made good friends with a baby duck family of 7 plus mom, exchanging leftover corn chips for the stroking of their downy backs. It was as good as it gets for each of us...

Lying in the waves, watching the sunshine sparkle, I remembered again how embracing the sensual feeds my soul, nurturing a strength and clarity that logic alone simply does not grant me. My body and it's wisdom about the soul it contains and has partnered with, knew what treasures lay in a pilgramage to my lake most holy....simply I needed to choose again my trust in both the soft knowing of my body and in the strength of my life's grace.

grace exercised

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure-and unexpected adventure-of hosting a guest on my radio show who is brilliant in her field, insightful, powerful, and quite provocative. I was looking forward to being with her again 15 years from the time we had first met, curious as to where our years had taken us. Little did I know that our radio show experience would have me living a blog I wrote a few month ago titled "letting go of figuring it out".

For those who listened to my May 28th BlogTalkRadio show, you may know where I am going with this. My moment of truth came when my guest questioned me for throwing an herb into my compost pile, scolding me as wrong and insensitive to do so. This was one of many in a series of questions that had a cat and mouse dynamic to them...and I did not like being the mouse especially on a live show! By the time we got to the nettle question, I could feel my excitement about hosting my special guest morphing into irritation, and then into my body getting it’s armor up and ready for battle.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am an advocate of lively dialogue, knowing the avoidance of healthy conflict not only misses a creative opportunity, it often-times leads to an escalation of conflict and polarization between the parties. However, this cat and mouse game was not only irritating to me, it was not respectful to the listeners who had come to learn from our show and so I began to claim the righteousness of my anger.

Ahhh, the beauty of a daily meditation practice...As soon as I realized my body was girding up for battle based on my right to indignation, I smiled, took some deep breaths in and out, and asked myself "what is really going on here?" (versus my current thought of "off with her head!"). My soft inner voice whispered back "learning" and my body began to relax, my mind shifting from being surprised, then defensive into curious. Not much to my surprise, my guest then changed gears and away we went with the show that had been intended....grace exercised.

Instead of engaging in either the active conflict of whose is right/whose is wrong or the passive war of "she’s a piece of work!", choosing instead to pause and breath graced me with wonderful learning and how I have grown. I was neither negating nor diminishing myself in the experience I was having, which I would have 15 years ago, especially given the dynamics of this guest playing her cosmic role so well. By making room for grace through the choice to drop back into my body through breathing, self-awareness became present, transforming my irritation at another into an opportunity to choose grace.

Grace for me is less about being passive and more an active choice to let go and trust in what is being delivered is for my best. Before the show, I had placed myself as the novice and my guest the expert; afterwards, I could appreciate my grace and my guest's mastery. Through exercising grace, more of my guest's brilliance could be shared with the listeners and I received understanding of the important of grace in how I live......less reluctance to live as a queen. But that's a writing for my next blog.

You can hear me talk more about the matters in this blog by going to the June 5th BlogTalkRadio show.

integrity matters

One of the things I have learned about my life is 1. answers do come to the questions I ask of the universe and 2. sometimes I need to do something physical to get out of my head in order to hear-feel really-my answer. And so, on this fine May day, I took myself, my ipod with mp3s that I have been meaning to listen to-omg is that one truly from 2007?!-to rake up oak leaves buried in the grass over winter. Good focused physical exercise that would allow me to engage my conscious mind so that other minds could speak to me.

The question awaiting an answer was how to craft a business that delivers my passion for women's impact -our grace, grit, and gratitude-while being a woman, a mother, a friend, and a daughter, an artist.... As my peeps know, I am all about the "how" in deciphering the world, for in the "how" is the integrity, something our world is learning the need for these days. I first learned the importance of integrity-the congruence between the "what "and the "how"-while volunteering for a series of non-profits in my early 20's. It was in these years of working with people committed to bettering the world and yet, so often angry at those perceived as not caring the same, that I learned of the importance of integrity in my life... ....that going to war for peace does not create peace.

I learned integrity's wisdom while learning to parent, for while children may not come with a written instruction manual, they do come with their own directions. And when we are willing to acknowledge the difference between their needs and our history, make our parenting choices accordingly, we honor the sacred trust of being the child's first god/dess and teacher, growing up both the child and the parent in the process. Another wisdom learned through integrity....life is mutual, set up to teach and benefit all involved.

Raking and listening to my ipod, I heard Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks, talk of the four principles that guide him, number 4 being "everything matters" or as I say, the small builds the big. As women, we know this well...the many small acts needed to grow a human being from a baby into maturity, the many small acts that transform a building into a cozy home, or the many small acts over time which actualize our faith and trust in each other. Another JaiKaur life truism...we grow wisdom, a quality different from knowledge, through the experiences that the street life of daily living graces us with.

And so, through the repetitive act of raking, it came to me, my answer so soft and yet so certain in it's knowing...my business needed to embrace the same integrity that had served so well my parenting, my crafting of a house into a home, my work as an architect and mediator. Simply, I needed to pay attention to the needs voiced by my business, listen well to the unspoken but clearly said within me, and surrender my impatience to trusting the divine's way. And in surrendering more to receiving and releasing more my need to control, my business could become more than I could have figured out through my knowledge, control, and will alone.

Question asked, answer received....thank you grace!

Making Love with Mystery

The other day, while in chauffermom mode, I listened to NPR's Science Friday being broadcast from the "Origins Symposium" at Arizona State University. Scientists from around the world were discussing "Using Tiny Particles to Answer Giant Questions" and I was struck by what these scientists were saying, scientists whose training focuses them on the logical, rational, and emotionally neutral of their world. They were sharing how they love learning from the unknown mysteries of the universe, the most exciting part of their job being when they went into the mystery and found nothing at all of what they were expecting- "ecstacy" is how one scientist termed it! Not finding out what they expected to find meant they were not thinking big and magically enough and they could now expand their quest (even if it does not make their funding source very happy to not know whether martians truly are green).

As women, we are very familiar with mystery-what man has not exclaimed of this of us-yet we are often challenged to embrace the ecstacy of our mystery in our lives as women. We may revel in the magic and miracle of a body that can turn blood into milk and create from the union of two cells the complexity of a human being. But what to do about the power in our mystery that in times past has made us feared, even thought to be dangerous? Students of history may remember that to be a healer, midwife, or powerful woman in the middle ages could be dangerous, with communities where women were killed simply for using their powers of transformation. Even though generations have come and gone since, patterns of energy carry on through the generations until consciously transformed. Sometimes, the emotions that we feel within us are from a time not our own, and are simply presenting themselves not in the truth of what is so now, but in request of our transforming them for now.

We live in times most exciting, where what we do not know is calling to be embraced by not only scientists as the good news, but by all of us as well. No matter our level of current mastery, we are being asked to embrace even more of who we are, especially the magical mystery of our infinity and divinity. When we embrace our unknown and mystery as the good news, expand through an active relationship with our spirit and soul, and share our experiences with others, we illuminate magic and miracles not yet known. As the scientists pointed out, what we don't know yet may be what saves us from what we know now. Today, consider meeting what you do not know, understand, or have confusion around, as your invitation to greet it instead with awe, curiosity, and excitement, to make love with the mystery of your being and let your ecstacy change the world!

The Gift of Grief

I have been off my game lately, a little more absent-minded and a little less with the joys of the day. At first I thought it was simply the changes brought about by the side effects of winter hibernation-too many carbs and not enough exercise-that was making me sluggish in getting together with the energy of spring. Or, I would blame the energetics of living in a world distressed by it's economy serving as a wake-up call to grow up. However, as I sit here in my parents home and all that being here calls upon my emotions, I must honor the wisdom of what my tears are telling me...that loss is less about the words we use to talk of it and more of how it challenges us, even those who believe themselves ok with impermanence.

I am being brought back to the powerful workshop of grief and how important the work of grief is to growing compassion, first for ourselves and then the other. To our minds, feeling our sorrow is the antithesis of what it believes in and so we choose to avoid, gloss over, or go into psuedo-spiritual mode when feeling sorrow's presence. Grief is a powerful teacher on the truth of impermanence and simply wants us to worship each moment we are in, for this moment must die to birth the next moment. We are taught to disconnect our energy from that which is painful and call it maturity. And while this may keep us feeling safe and gain us the illusion of control, the truth is our withdrawal from what is painful simply removes the presence of our compassion
for ourself and the other.

And so, instead of stopping my tears, I allow them to flow down my face, their presence honoring the loss of my parent's place in what keeps me feeling safe and always loved as well as for their grief and fear of their destination. My child sees my tears and simply gives me a hug, innocent still of the price of the awareness of losing those always in your life. The tears help me to be more with the short and sweet of time-less important becomes what is past and more important what remains when the day is gone.... love, simply love.

our humanity is our divinity

This week, I took a day off from a life overbooked in responsibilities to pick up a lamp I had ordered from an artisan whose work I had fallen in love with almost 20 years ago when I lived in Santa Fe. Janna has decided to move on to a different expression of herself after 21 years of making beautiful ways to light up a room and I wanted to make sure to get another lamp of hers before I no longer could. Turns out that her studio was but 2 hours away -who knew!-from where I live in Massachusetts and so my spiritself whispered sweet nothings in my ear, asking for some time in my life as well. I had all the reasons that the pressures of too-much-todo-in-too-little-time can argue for, and, I have learned over the years that taking time for what calls out within me, softly yet earnestly, never becomes a regret of mine.

So, I packed up our puppy from Chicago-another story of how what was true for my spirit and soul won out over the protests of Logical and Sensible-and played hooky from my shoulds of the day. I brought along my ipod so as to be able to play my music while driving (those of you who have/had teenagers know how rarely you get to play your own music uncontested). It felt good to be long-distance driving as it is one of my ways to meditate, perhaps because while my chatty-cathy mind is busy driving, my softer-voiced mind becomes more easily heard and felt by me.

The town of Easthampton is reached by driving over Mt. Tom, a mini-mountain by standards other than coastal new england, and beautiful to drive over with it's steep road up and down the edge of the mountain and the town so very small below. I picked up the lamp, met an artist who I have appreciated for years, and as we compared notes on the music our daughters loved to listen to, I felt at home and at ease, even though I had just met this women/artist and had driven to this town for the first time. I felt at home through the choice to honor and now enjoy, in a way small and still large, what I needed in the midst of my very busy and responsible life....an adventure that touched my heart and soul.

So what does this tale of playing hookey from my to-do list have to do with divinity? Simple... that divinity is found not only in the cathedrals and temples ancient, it is also found in the mountains and meetings local, in the spontaneous choice to create an adventure out of an errand vs simply checking it off my to-do list. Divinity is honoring our spirit and soul's need for breathing room and expression in our daily lives, even if the taskmasters of logic and duty tsk-tsk us for doing so. Divinity is not a place we go to; she is found in the "how" of our daily routines, in our choice to not become so unconscious in our to-do list that we forget that what we do/get done is not who we truly are or what the gift of a life human is about.

All beings who live on this earth these days have chosen the courageous act of living divinity through the duties, trials, and ecstacy of our daily humanity. Our times are asking that we are all live our divinity even more through living our humanity. No longer is the sacred split off from the secular...we are being asked to honor the sacred in the daily and in the daily, the sacred. To do so is to become even more clear that there are no small acts, simply those that we bring our awareness to and those we do not. And so, in this time of changing norms and direction, perhaps in playing hooky from your logic and to-do list in order to honor the whisper of the voice of an adventure and the mysterious, you are simply honoring the divine in your humanity...and that is go(0)d.

Letting go of figuring it out

Letting go of figuring it out

For the last few days, I have been wondering what to blog about. Nothing profound was coming to mind, and my life was surely not providing me many inspirational moments. I put my desire for some water to come into my dry well of inspiration and then forgot about it. Then while dialoguing with someone about how we each chose to meet fear, I went halleluiah!…my blog topic has been
delivered! I love it when what I know to be true-clarity, prayer, release, trust-works so that I recognize it in my 3D world!

I was sharing with a woman how when I felt my fear at the many challenges in my life, I am committing to instead…. ….choosing faith in my spirit and my infinity to take care of meeting the challenges. She replied that without first understanding the fear, the fear would not leave and that in fact, it would increase it’s impact in one’s life. I recognized this “inquiring minds want to
know” tool as one I too have used in seeking to mine the gold out of an emotional experience I am having. And given the current nature of life (did I really sign up willingly for membership in “challenging, gotta figure out a better way, and whoohoo… lots of scary, crazy, overwhelming in scope stuff coming down the pike” times?), if I try to figure it all out with my mind, I will simply go
crazy! Trying to figure out with my mind “why” what if” “because”will simply fry my brains, sizzle my nervous system, and make checking out seem the sensible thing to do….and I really
don’t think that is the purpose of the massive changes in our world.

By living my commitment that life is not out to get me, I have chosen to trust even more that which cradles me and all beings brave enough to have signed onto being part of these monumental changes. Part of what I am changing within me in order to not get
bowled over with all that is coming down these days, is to relinquish my habitual/mental either-or” thinking…one of us is right, one of us must be wrong, etc. In this conversation of our
differences in meeting fear, instead of yielding to this mental habit and culturally enforced demand for polarity, there instead became room for both of us to be exactly who we are… “both-and” I call it.

Instead of competing and contracting the space we occupied together, there became a sharing and an expansion of the space we occupied. It was an amazing ah-ha on how our union with our
spirit and soul, in relationship with each other, creates the fertile ground for growing possibilities for the time we are hurtling toward.

So today, when you find yourself in the “either-or ” land of thinking, grant yourself the gift of instead choosing to expand into “both- and” thinking and feel the difference within you and
perhaps even notice the difference outside of you. It is an amazing time to be alive and part of the transition into a time of embracing both the secular and the spiritual as one, understanding all through compassion, and courageous creation through community.

For consciousness is our new currency….stay tuned for more!

Dreamers

Along with millions and around the world, I watched Barack Hussein Obama become the 44th president of the United States of America and felt the joy, inspiration, and promise of this day. It was a good day for dreamers-from the dreamers of “we the people” to the dreamers of a world where all human being are born into a world in which there is no war, poverty, nor hunger of body, spirit, or mind.

A few years ago, while purchasing books, the person behind me began to speak of what a waste the ’60’s were…”lots of fuss and idealism and no real lasting change”. The bookstore owner and I looked at each other and I began to speak of that decade of dreaming. I said that I still believed in the dream that “we the people” could end poverty, war, hunger and that the seeds planted in the ’60’s were simply growing quietly and surely through time, care, and commitment into their fruition.

I have come to understand that what I have gone through in my life has been to prepare me for this time we are in. Whether it be to learn the necessity of daily self-care of not only my body but my spirit and mind as well, or the learning to greet with surrender and curiosity life’s many challenges, or to choose to continue to believe in the magic of life and the basic goodness of people even when discouraged and betrayed. This has been but preparation for the time we are in, the time we were born to serve.

As women, our visions, our voices, and our wisdoms serve as guardians for all in life. The age we live in needs the grace of our visions, our voices, and our wisdoms more than ever. As women, our compassion, intuition, creativity, and deep knowing are skills vital to a world falling apart to make way for a world-dream where community, compassion, and faith are the tools and foundation for re-building.

So, bring your dreams out and with your wisdom, faith, and courage, make them real. Join with others in the world who are using the challenges of their world to dream more and fear less. For with heart and hand, and with faith in the majesty of the human spirit, there is no challenge that cannot be met. As you were born in these times, you have within you what these times call for-the renewal of the power of the human community acting in accordance with their faith, integrity, and dignity for all.